Anton Corbijn’s new film, Control, is the story of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the esteemed English post-punk band “Joy Division.” Curtis killed himself in 1980, just two days before the band’s first tour in the U.S.

This article describes his life and presents stunning photographs, two music videos, the movie trailer and a photo-gallery.

There has been increasing alarm that technological advances have changed not only our everyday lives, but also the very nature of our sense of humanity. Others say that surging technology hasn’t had the ruinous impact that some have anticipated.

The article presents both perspectives, as well as very attractive, memorable photographs and a photo-gallery.

Earlier in the week, I reported here about the scandal that was emerging at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa (OK). In that article, I wrote:

“Twenty years ago, on his widely viewed national televsion program, televangelist Oral Roberts announced to his viewers that he had been reading a spy novel when, all of a sudden, God visited him and ordered him to raise $8 million for Roberts’ university, or else he would be “called home.” Of course, not wanting that to happen, Roberts’ viewers showered him with vast amounts of money for the university.

Last Tuesday, three former professors at Oral Roberts University sued the evangelical institution in Tulsa (OK), filing a petition in state court that accuses the university’s current president, Oral Roberts’ son Richard L. Roberts, of using university resources to back a local mayoral candidate and to bankroll an extravagant lifestyle for his family. The lawsuit also says that university administrators tried to cover up the president’s involvement in the mayoral campaign when the Internal Revenue Service began investigating the nonprofit institution’s interventions into local politics.

The university immediately issued brief a statement regarding the lawsuit on Tuesday that read, in its entirety, “It is important for ORU students and their families, faculty and staff, alumni, partners as well as the general public to understand that this lawsuit is largely premised upon a compilation of incomplete statements, unsubstantiated rumors, and innuendoes. ORU will address these allegations through the legal process.”

Later in the week, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, announced that God had recently visited him as well, ordering him to deny all of the lurid allegations that are contained in a lawsuit that threatens to bury this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal. As mentioned before, Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and extravagant spending at the university’s donors’ expense, lavish spending that has included numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university’s jet for his daughter’s senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay. She, in turn, is being accused of squandering tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as ‘underage males.'”

Ralph Blumenthal reports in today’s edition of the New York Times that Mr. Roberts was on “Larry King Live” on Tuesday night with his wife, Lindsay, who is also included in the accusations. He denied having taken any improper political role, saying: “I didn’t ask or coerce anybody. That’s not true.” He and Mrs. Roberts also denied wrongdoing to a list of other accusations in the suit. Denials were also made to reporters who flew to New York with the Robertses in the university’s jet.

The original CNN news report on The Oral Roberts Lawsuit, as well as this Tuesday night’s “Larry King Live” television interviews with Richard and Lindsay Roberts are presented below:

UPDATE:

On Thursday (10/11/2007), David Kuo published a detailed response at Belief.net to the statements that were made by the Roberts’ while defending themselves during their television appearance on “Larry King Live.” In general, their statements were characterized as half truths and outright lies, nothing more than an attempt to conceal the facts of what has actually been going on at Oral Roberts University behind a deceptive display of smoke and mirrors. Readers will find the particulars of the rebuttal that David Kuo has published here.

Touch from a Distance: The Bleak Exhilaration of Ian Curtis and Joy Division

Anton Corbijn’s recent bio-documentary, Control, tells the story of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of the revered Manchester post-punk band Joy Division. The band made only two albums before Curtis killed himself in 1980, two days before the band was scheduled to leave for its first concert tour in the United States. Prior to Curtis’ death, Joy Division was virtually unknown in the United States, even though their following in the U.K. had been growing steadily.

By the time most people in the United States had started taking note of Joy Division, Ian Curtis was gone. However, both his life-story and the band’s music, characterized by darkly glittering songs that resonated with resplendent tones rather than decandantly world-weary sounds, were powerful enough to earn Joy Division a passionate audience. The fact that the band’s surviving members regrouped as a very different band, New Order, has made the story even more magnetic.

Ian Curtis grew up in Manchester, England, which in the 1970s was a modest town with streets filled with working-class flats and houses. As a teenager, it’s said that he got involved in many of the things that other kids of his social class and generation were doing. He and his friends took whatever drugs they could get their hands on; he met, fell in love with and later married one of the local girls, a quiet but slyly intelligent young woman named Deborah. And after being inspired by attending a Sex Pistols show, he started a band with some of his friends.

Not long after the band started up in 1976, Ian was diagnosed with epilepsy, and the cocktail of drugs used to treat the disorder was only marginally effective. His new on-stage life as a most unlikely sort of jittery and charismatic rock star, soon began to conflict with his life at home as a husband in a rather dreary working class setting. In 1979, he met a worldly but sweet young journalist named Annik, and the two soon became involved in a romantic affair that shook everything that he’d come to accept as safe and secure about his life.

A year later, Ian’s health was deteriorating and his marriage had collapsed after his wife, Deborah, discovered his infidelity with Annik. Alone in his Manchester home, during the early hours of Sunday, May 18, 1980, after having watched Werner Herzog’s film Stroszek and listening to Iggy Pop’sThe Idiot, Curtis hanged himself in his kitchen.